


amber light, bending

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode 111 Spoilers, M/M, a little hurt/comfort in these trying times, but also this fic is very much not concerned with canon, fjord's competence Thing, various fic tropes re: wound care, what if i took care of you and you took care of me and we took care of each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26643676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: The hammock sways, the bathtub steams. In the warm room, Caleb shivers.(Being in the tower is kind of like being inside Caleb's brain; Fjord finds he's pretty into it.)
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 10
Kudos: 208





	amber light, bending

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the lame title it's so late lmao anyway listen it’s cr and there’s a big bathtub what were u expecting me to do with that

It strikes Fjord when they’re sitting down at pancakes and Caleb is explaining the clocks, that being in the tower is very much like being inside the wizard’s brain. He’s a little hazy on the ‘centimeter away from reality’ thing, but he’s pretty sure he’s picking up on the rest of it. Knowing the time is Caleb’s  _ thing,  _ the tower is Caleb’s  _ new  _ thing, and everything is big fireplaces and stained glass and amber reflections; this is Caleb, presenting everything he is.

And it’s just like Caleb, to show Fjord who he is without saying anything about it. To show all of them how much he  _ cares,  _ how far he’ll go for the Nein, what he’ll construct around them and for them and because of them. Caleb, for all he can talk in some pretty impressive circles, is at his heart a man of action.

(If Fjord put a hand on the wall, would Caleb feel it? If he picked at the room like a scab, if he broke his beautiful windows, if he cut his hand—if he set the books aside and knelt at his end table and cut his hand and pressed it to Dashilla’s mark, would Caleb—)

Trent Ikithon, a pustule of a man, had been grossly impressive. Caleb’s work here puts him entirely to shame.

In his hammock, still where it could be swaying, Fjord wonders up at the ceiling. Can Caleb hear him? Likely not, and yet. And yet.

He dreams of holding his falchion to Caleb’s throat, the scroll a gauntlet thrown between them. He dreams of Caleb’s voice in his ear, whispering a warning about Avantika. He dreams of fire beneath a well in Asarius, magic saturating the air and a demon saying Caleb’s name. He dreams of blood in the water, their hands clasped together, saltwater stinging the wounds. 

Fjord wakes, burning. It means he hasn’t drowned.

\---

Listen, Fjord’s not the most observant guy. He knows it, the Nein know it, the Wildmother herself probably knows it by now. But once in a while, usually at the wrong time, his brain decides to sit up and pay attention and poke at something.

His latest revelation: Caleb looks tired.

This is not a new phenomenon. Caleb spent the first four months with them looking various degrees of tired. He’s usually exhausted by the end of every fight. After the fucking unceasing emotional hits the guy is taking lately, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he isn’t sleeping very well. It shouldn’t be notable at all.

_ Caleb looks tired,  _ his brain grumbles. He can’t let go of it. The tower is a thing that grows more perfect by the day, it’s full of things and people that Caleb loves, books and cats and the Nein (and maybe he doesn’t use the words, but this  _ entire tower  _ is an ‘I love you’ if Fjord’s ever seen one) and he looks tired. 

At first, Fjord figures it’s the spell. He doesn’t know how much it takes to weave the thing together at the end of a long day, but the clocks are Caleb and the tower is Caleb and it makes a certain amount of sense that it needs a lot of energy to keep it going. 

Caleb has a crick in his neck one morning, when Fjord’s the second one down for breakfast, and it’s just out of place enough to grab his attention again. Something’s uncomfortable here for Caleb, physically uncomfortable in this near-heaven. Something’s making him look tired, even when he looks up from a book and a cup of tea to give a lazy smile.

Fjord’s smiled at a lot of people in his life. He knows how to recognize a front.

“You alright, there?” he asks, looking over the breakfast spread as he walks around the table. The trick to cornering Caleb is to act like you’re doing something else.

“Stayed up with a book,” he laughs. “You know how I get.”

“I sure do.” Fjord puts a hand on his shoulder from behind, a friendly pat he knows Caleb sees reflected in the copper teapot. “Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

Caleb, tired but also feeling as relaxed as he ever seems to feel, leans back in the chair a little. Fjord’s hand doesn’t move while Caleb does, which means it’s resting over the jut of his collarbone. His shirt is soft. Fjord can feel his heart beating through it, steady. And he has another little moment of insight.

Caleb smiles that lazy smile again, watches him in the reflection. 

“I am,” he says, and Fjord doesn’t believe him.

\---

The thing about the journey to Eiselcross is that it sucks. No, seriously, it’s full of snow and lava and a myriad of arcane disasters, and they have to do it all while navigating Vess Derogna’s fucking inscrutable politics. Fjord’s of the opinion that the entire Cerberus Assembly being torn apart brick by brick would be a net gain for the world—after three weeks with Derogna, his tune hasn’t so much changed as it’s picked up a harmony and a countermelody and all the rest of that fancy song shit.

The other thing about the journey to Eiselcross: it’s exhilarating. He loves it, no listen, he  _ loves it.  _ It seems like they don’t go a day without running into some new puzzle or disaster or puzzling disaster, and Fjord is absolutely living for it. He gets a week’s worth of adrenaline seven days a week, he gets to be out there with his sword, fighting alongside all of them. He hasn’t always been a competent protector, but every day out here he thinks he’s getting a better handle on it.

Then he gets between Caleb and the claws of a bad-tempered (is there any other kind?) white dragon and Jester and Caduceus burn through their allotted magic putting him back together enough to move into the tower, where Yasha burns through  _ her  _ healing magic to stop most of the bleeding. Outside there’s wind and screaming and a final gust of icy breath, and Beau’s yelling that they got it, they got it, Caleb’s hit and is Fjord okay?

And Fjord yells back that he’s fine, the blood is on the inside, what about Caleb?

Beau pulls him over the threshold, Veth at their backs, and the door closes in a way that plunges them into relative silence. Caleb’s alarmingly pale, ice in his hair and a shake in his hands. 

“It’s alright,” he assures them, when Jester gives him her last Cure Wounds and starts twisting her hands together, clearly worried. Caduceus is anxious too, but it manifests in the usual ‘oh let me take care of all of you’ way that it does; he’s talking to one of the cats about tea and soup.

(Beau and Veth have withdrawn to a corner, having a quick, sharp conversation in gnomish. They’re either arguing or agreeing about something; Fjord catches Derogna’s name a few times, but nothing more.)

“Is it?” Fjord asks, leaning on Yasha. He’s fine, he’ll  _ be  _ fine, but he’s just lightheaded enough that the support is much appreciated.

Caleb looks as affronted as a man with frost in his eyebrows can. “Of course, I only need rest. What about you?”

“I’ve taken worse hits,” Fjord says. What he doesn’t say:  _ it’s worth it, you think it isn’t but it’s worth it. Between you and danger is where I want to be. _ He doesn’t say any of it because Yasha shifts, gets him settled in a chair next to the fireplace before she’s drawn into the conversation in the corner that’s now also attracted Jester. 

Caleb staggers to a spot next to him, the ice melting with his proximity to the fire. He’s so cold he steams, but his skin stays a few shades too pale. Fjord can see a vein in his neck, blue.

“You know, I’ve never seen your room,” he says, because it seems like as good a time as any to bring it up. Caleb flinches, just a little.

“Oh, it’s mostly books and things,” he says, clearly going for unaffected. He mostly just sounds distant. 

“Right.” 

Caduceus has joined the group in the corner and is listening with a patient expression. The thing with Caduceus is that patient is kind of his default expression, and if Fjord hadn’t lost a bunch of blood taking three direct hits from a dragon today he’d probably put more effort into looking beneath the patience. It’s just... it feels far away, right now. Derogna’s back at the last outpost working on one of her weird artifacts, and everybody’s alive; maybe whatever everyone’s talking about can be tomorrow’s problem.

Fjord decides to solve today’s problem, instead.

“Listen,” he says, and then he says it again, a little more urgent. Caleb’s watching the fire with a glazed expression. “Hey,  _ listen.” _

Caleb jolts, turns back to him.

“Help me back up to my room? I still need some bandages, and with the way Beau just started pulling out notebooks they’ll be over there all night.”

Caleb nods, jerky, and pretty soon Fjord’s on a stool in his bedroom. Caleb’s wrapping the last scratch, a long gash that was mostly closed by a spell earlier. It spans the length of Fjord’s ribs—peeling the armor off around it had been a bitch and a half, especially with Caleb’s freezing fingers, but the help had been both necessary and appreciated. 

“You know that stone you gave me,” Caleb says, and Fjord remembers the spark of magenta that haloed him through the fight. “I think it probably saved my life, when the dragon did that last roar.”

“Well, good—” he breaks off with a grunt, as Caleb pulls the bandage taut and knots it. “Good. That was the point of it.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

\---

“You know,” Fjord says, once Caleb’s helped him into some loose nightclothes that appeared in a drawer he’s never noticed, “You’re really cold.”

Caleb frowns.

“No, I mean you’re  _ literally  _ cold right now. And your coat’s all wet from the ice.” It’s not a come on, actually, but Fjord’s brain helpfully points out that  _ oh, your clothes are all wet, what  _ can  _ we do about that  _ had been a significant plot point in the last two romance novels he borrowed from Jester. And he remembers the feeling of Caleb’s heartbeat under his hand all at once, and he remembers that they fought a dragon today, and, and, and.

“Ah, I’ll just go to my room and warm up,” Caleb says, turning to go.

_ Caleb looks tired,  _ Fjord thinks. And,  _ he’s cold.  _ He gets up from the canvas he’d been settling into.

“You could stay a while,” he says. “Got a hot bath just over there.”

The hammock sways, the bathtub steams. 

In the warm room, Caleb shivers. And he nods.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they hook up? probably? i don’t write smut but just use your imagination. widofjord is like... it’s so good... fjord and caleb had all this fucked up stuff between them for so long and i said “hello” and then they worked it out and i said “hello??” and just, what’s fic for if not for this. sorry if there are errors in this it’s thursday night immediately post-episode and i am so tired, anyway hope this was enjoyable. i don’t know why they said “you know” approximately five thousand times in this... it is very late.   
> leave a comment and let me know what you think :) i love them!!


End file.
